


the two of us (alone in the end)

by ghostbandaids



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Feels, Crying, Dead TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Depressed Toby Smith | Tubbo, Gen, Ghost TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Hurt No Comfort, Mental Health Issues, ghost tommy only has bad memories, gommy lmao, this hurts a bit, this is just angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29269572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostbandaids/pseuds/ghostbandaids
Summary: Tubbo pressed the disc into the jukebox and the familiar music started to play. The music of sunsets and friendships, apologies and hope. The music that they’d fought for. And the bench —  the bench that had been theirs in a way that nothing else had truly been, the bench that had survived wars, outlived people.“I wonder why I've never come here before,” not-really-Tommy said. “It’s nice.”“It is,” Tubbo replied, tears running down his face. “It’s a special place.”Tommy comes back with only bad memories, Tubbo almost wishes he could forget when things were good.
Relationships: Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit
Comments: 43
Kudos: 325





	the two of us (alone in the end)

**Author's Note:**

> this piece will be removed if ccs express discomfort
> 
>  **CW:** character death (not depicted), dealing with loss, i will not comfort you
> 
> i haven't read any fics like this but i know they're out there so hopefully, i haven't parallelled anyone. i was just thinking about how ghostbur has only happy memories and what it would be like if tommy came back with bad ones. 
> 
> sorry in advance for any grammar mistakes, hope you enjoy it!

Tubbo’d still been happy when they told him.

The gaping crater he could see from the roof of Snowchester seemed more like an accomplishment than something destructive — all it’d taken to create it was the press of a button. The single movement of a thumb. 

The project had been a success. 

“Is something wrong?” he asked, looking at their grim faces and tight expression.  _ Why weren’t they celebrating? _

“Tommy’s dead,” Jack said bluntly. There weren’t words to twist or ways to interpret the statement. Still, his brain seemed to reject the idea.

_ Tommy isn’t dead,  _ he thought.  _ Surely not. _

“What?” he asked. “What did you say?”

“Tommy is dead,” Jack repeated. 

“No,” Tubbo said. “No, he’s not.”

“Tubbo,” Niki said, a hand resting on his shoulder gently. “We made a mistake. He was out there—he—he was out there when it exploded.”

Tubbo stared at her uncomprehendingly.

“No,” he repeated, shaking his head faster and faster. “No, no, no.”

His knees gave out and he found himself on the ground, the snow soaking through his pants. Gravel bit into his knees but he didn’t notice the bleeding cuts until later. 

_ Tommy? _

_ Tommy was dead? _

Smiling Tommy, loud Tommy, the Tommy that had given up his discs for his dream and then Tubbo’s dream — the Tommy that would have died for him without a second thought. 

He remembered standing at the top of a bridge, staring down at the ground far below. Too far, almost. The tops of the trees were below him and the clouds seemed close enough to reach. He backed away from the edge. 

But Tommy had been at the bottom, calling for Tubbo to jump, his blue eyes shining with confidence. 

“Trust me!” he’d yelled. 

Tubbo had, not even pausing at the edge before he pushed away from it, not even afraid as the wind tousled his hair. Falling was easy because the only person that would always catch him was waiting at the bottom of the plunge. 

“Catch me!” he’d yelled. And of course, Tommy had. There was adrenaline racing through his veins when he landed in the boy’s arms but there was no fear, no doubt. 

Because Tommy was always there for him. 

Tommy was always there to catch him.

Tommy  _ was  _ always there to catch him.  _ Was,  _ his brain whispered treacherously. 

Because there was no one to catch him now. 

He fell, hard.

Eret was there, whispering comforts that he heard but didn’t listen to. Puffy was there, hugging him, her arms not as warm or secure as Tommy’s — no one gave hugs like Tommy did. Bad was there, trying to get him to eat. 

He refused, couldn’t even stomach the thought of food. 

The man left muffins on the counter, and Tubbo threw them away the second he was out the door. 

Ranboo came to talk to him late at night and early in the morning — Tubbo didn’t sleep much anymore — and sometimes, Tubbo managed weak smiles at the man’s jokes, but he never thought they were funny. 

They might have been witty or smart but they weren’t the obnoxious insults of a boy with a red bandana. 

He missed Tommy’s wheeze-laugh, the way he was never afraid of saying what he thought and never apologized. Everyone was so careful with their words these days. 

He knew that when they looked at him, they saw the silhouette of a taller boy at his back. His other half, his sometimes-foil, his Tommy.

He knew that because when he looked in the mirror, he swore that he saw Tommy too, grinning, taunting him. Then he would turn around, whirling to face the specter. And Tommy wouldn’t be there. 

Of course, he wouldn’t be there. 

Still, there was a part of Tubbo that thought Tommy would walk through every unlocked door and wave through every window. He refused to sleep, refused to eat, spent his waking hours doing nothing, trying to reduce his thoughts to nothingness as well, waiting for Tommy and knowing he would never come. 

In his peripheral, he could see the hand-offs, the game of don’t-leave-Tubbo-alone-for-long. The glances that people shared as he was ferried between their watches and the reassurance that they’d gotten him through another night. 

They must have taken away his weapons because he didn’t know where they were anymore and when he went higher than the second floor of a building, they followed him. It was like they hadn’t realized that he’d already hit the ground. 

Like they didn’t know that what had hurt him was worse than a cut by a blade, worse than anything he could do to himself. 

The people who said time healed all wounds were wrong. They had to be. Because scrapes on knees and broken arms would knit together but the feeling of loss only festered. 

Each week was worse because each week was another seven days without Tommy. 

He tried not to think about birthdays and holidays and anniversaries because he didn’t know what he would do when they arrived. Didn’t know if he  _ could  _ do it. 

Missing Tommy was like missing a piece of himself, having a hole torn out of some vital body structure. He went through his day in a haze of numbness and the world felt so empty and wrong that what was missing must have been as crucial as a stomach or a brain

But when he thought about the word missing, it didn’t quite fit. Because missing things could be found even if they were gone. Missing things were simply tucked away in nooks or lost in piles of misplaced possessions. 

Tommy wasn’t missing. 

He was marked by a stone and a pile of flowers that Tubbo replaced as soon as they wilted. 

_ Gone,  _ Tubbo thought, the word echoing and multiplying in his head.  _ Gone, gone, gone.  _

He watched the needle of the compass —  _ Your Tommy,  _ it read  _ — _ spin endlessly, unable to find a direction to focus in. It was aimless, just like him.

Day after day. 

Spinning. 

Spinning. 

Stopped. Pointing in a solid direction just like it always used to, in the times Tubbo could have gone to Tommy but chose the safety of a nation over a friend. 

He threw the blankets off his wrinkled clothes, not even putting on shoes, before running out the door towards Tommy’s grave. 

His feet sunk into the tall grass and his breath came in quick puffs but he didn’t slow. 

Even stumbling hard enough to fall and tear through the knee of his pants couldn’t stop him. 

“Tommy!” he screamed, running through the gates of the haphazard graveyard someone had put together when they realized that their little nations weren’t so peaceful after all. “Tommy, where are you?”

The compass needle pointed him faithfully to the boy’s grave and he followed it. 

The headstone was fresh — all of the markers in the graveyard were — but Tommy’s was so new that the overturned dirt hadn’t even grown grass yet.

“Hello?” said a voice that sounded like Tommy but couldn’t have been because it was too meek, not loud enough. 

He turned slowly. 

In front of him stood a boy. A boy with blue eyes, blond hair, and a red-sleeved shirt, though they were lit like that of an overexposed photo. 

The boy’s legs faded into nothingness — so he wasn’t really standing there, he was floating. 

“Tommy?” Tubbo said slowly, and then, running towards him, “Tommy!”

He crushed Tommy in a hug, holding him tightly. His torso was icy and he hadn’t said anything yet but he was _ there _ . 

So maybe things would be okay. 

“I missed you,” Tubbo mumbled into a shirt that smelled like the wind. “I really, really, missed you.”

Tommy patted his back awkwardly, and Tubbo pulled away just so that he could stare at the face he’d been worried he’d forget. 

“I—,” Tommy, ghost-Tommy, said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are.”

“What?” Tubbo said quietly. The air in his lungs left in a  _ whoosh _ of an exhale and for a second, the words rendered him unable to take in another breath.

“I don’t remember you,” the ghost said, turning in a slow circle. “Should I?”

He wasn’t malicious — sounded more genuine than alive-Tommy ever had — but the words stung. It was almost worse than losing Tommy the first time. Now he could look at him, touch him, but  _ his _ Tommy wasn’t there, not really.

He couldn’t find the voice to speak.

I’ve been here before,” the ghost said, drifting towards another grave that ambitious moss had started to encircle. “I remember sitting here.”

“You did sit there,” Tubbo said. He’d sat there too, one hand on Tommy’s back and the other catching his own, salty tears.

_ Wilbur Soot,  _ the headstone read. 

They’d argued about what to put on it:  _ brother, leader, revolutionary. _

_ Paranoid ruler of a pitch-black ravine, insane man who couldn’t stand to lose.  _

In the end, all they put were the dates of his life. Until someone carved Tommy’s, it was the shortest span of years in their graveyard. 

“What do you remember?” Tubbo asked.

“I remember—,” the ghost said, brow furrowed, “—I remember losing discs, music discs— Dream. Do you know Dream? I think he took them.”

“I know Dream,” Tubbo answered.

“Eret, I remember Eret. He—he betrayed us,” the ghost continued.

“He was sorry,” Tubbo said. “He  _ is  _ sorry. He apologized to us.” 

“Did he?” Tommy asked, confused. “I don’t remember that.”

“It’s okay,” Tubbo said. “It’s not your fault.”

“I remember being alone,” Tommy said. “All alone across the ocean, do you know what it’s like to be lonely?”

“Yes,” Tubbo choked out,  _ he did. _

“And then I was in a building, an old burned-out thing, and there were people watching me, water pouring down the walls. Maybe—maybe you were there. Were you there? I’m not sure.”

“I was there,” Tubbo answered, remembering Tommy screaming that the discs were worth more than him, remembering the sinking feeling in his chest when Tommy pulled a sword, the realization that they might die as almost-enemies. 

“You stayed with Techno,” Tubbo said. “Do you remember that, living with him?”   


Tommy shook his head, eyes sparking with weak anger. “Technoblade destroyed L’manberg and betrayed me. I wouldn’t live with him.”

“You did,” Tubbo said gently. “I think that you were friends, for a while.”

“No,” Tommy said. “No, that can’t be right. He hurt someone, a real friend—but I don’t know who. There were fireworks.”

Tubbo remembered fireworks too, saw them reflecting in the ghost’s glossy eyes. Hot and sparking and burning his skin. Techno’s laugh. They were memories that consumed his sleep, second only to his dreams of Tommy. 

“Tell me that you remember something happy,” Tubbo pleaded. “Anything.”

The ghost cocked his head. “What do you mean?” he asked, “when you say  _ happy _ ?”

“We were happy, sometimes,” Tubbo answered, the sound of childish laughter in the dappled sunlight echoing through his head. “We’re just kids, you and I. We weren’t always fighting in wars.”

Tommy only stared at him.

The memories — days in the sun, picking flowers and running through the woods, convincing Phil for rides on his huge wings, singing along to Wilbur’s guitar — played on Tubbo’s eyelids no matter how many times he blinked, but they were gone from Tommy’s.

The ghost shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “I don’t think that I remember anything like that.”

“Oh,” said Tubbo. “That’s okay.”

_ It wasn’t. It hurt. _

“Come with me,” he said to the ghost. Tommy followed him as they walked past the empty buildings, along the wooden path that ended in craters. There was a bench up ahead. 

“Sit with me,” Tubbo said, slipping a disc from his pocket — they hadn’t buried Tommy with them, pushed them into Tubbo’s closed fists instead, though he tried to refuse them.

He pressed the disc into the jukebox and the familiar music started to play. The music of sunsets and friendships, apologies and hope. The music that they’d fought for. And the bench — the bench that had been  _ theirs  _ in a way that nothing else had truly been, the bench that had survived wars, outlived people. 

If he didn’t really look at Tommy, just felt the boy’s presence, he could almost pretend that nothing had changed. 

“I wonder why I've never come here before,” not-really-Tommy said. “It’s nice.”

“It is,” Tubbo replied, tears running down his face. “It’s a special place.”

“Are you alright?” the ghost asked, noticing that Tubbo was crying. 

“Fine,” Tubbo answered. 

_ He wasn’t.  _

“Why are you crying?”

“I miss someone.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

The music played. The sun set. Tommy sat next to Tubbo, but it was only a reenactment of a routine, a dance that one person led the other in because they’d forgotten the steps. 

It wasn’t the same.

And it never would be.

**Author's Note:**

> uhh,,, it wasn't too angsty, right?
> 
> hope it was well-written even if it hurt a bit, let me know what you thought if you have the time!
> 
> or come yell at me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ghostbandaids) if you feel like it (:
> 
> <3


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